With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

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Students analyze how Abraham Lincoln in his “Second Inaugural Address” unfolds his examination of the ideas that led to the Civil War, paying particular attention to the order in which the points are made, how Lincoln introduces and develops his points, and the connections that are drawn between them. [RI.9–10.3]